Rome (Italy). Formation to discernment is at the center of the Pope’s Video of July 2025, produced by the World Prayer Network of the Pope in collaboration with the Diocese of Brooklyn, with the creative contribution of DeSales Media.
“We pray so that we may learn more and more to discern, to know how to choose the paths of life, and to reject everything that distances us from Christ and the Gospel” is the prayer request of Pope Leo XIV.
The narration of the video is set in a forest, where a girl walks, gets lost, and needs to orient herself. She looks around, stops, removes unnecessary weights, and starts walking again, using a compass and a map. She stops again, opens the Gospel, arrives at a cave in which there is a statue of Mary; prayer, in silence and listening, shows her the right way.
In the background, the Holy Father utters an unpublished prayer with which the faithful can ask the Holy Spirit – “light of our intelligence” and “breath and sweetness in our decisions” – the grace of knowing how to stop to listen carefully and become aware of their own feelings, thoughts, and ways of acting:
Holy Spirit, You, light of our intelligence,
breath and sweetness in our decisions,
Give me the grace to listen attentively to Your voice
to discern the secret passages of my heart,
so that I may grasp what is truly important to You
and free my heart from its torments.
I ask for the grace to learn to pause,
to become aware of the way I act,
of the feelings that inhabit me,
of the thoughts that invade me
and that, very often, I don’t even perceive.
I desire that my choices
may lead me to the joy of the Gospel.
Even if I have to go through moments of doubt and fatigue,
Even if I have to struggle, reflect, seek, start again…
So that, at the end of the journey,
Your consolation is the fruit of a right decision.
Grant me to know better what animates me,
to reject that which distances me from Christ,
and to love Him and serve Him more and more. Amen.
“Formation for discernment is fundamental for navigating in a complex world. It involves prayer, personal reflection, study of the Scriptures, and spiritual accompaniment. Cultivating a deep relationship with Jesus is what matters most, because in this way we can recognize His voice among the many voices of the world and have the necessary awareness to make our decisions based on a purpose and a more human horizon,” explains Fr. Cristóbal Fones, SJ, International Director of the Pope’s World Prayer Network.
Father Fones also recalls that, in the context of the Holy Year 2025, “the Pope’s Video acquires a particular relevance, because it makes us know the prayer intentions that the Holy Father carries in his heart. To obtain the grace of the Jubilee indulgence, one should pray for these intentions.”
In this summer time when many young people, also from the Salesian realities, participate in camps, walks, and initiatives of vocational discernment, the indication of prayer of Pope Leo is precious, to accompany the young men and women in search of their happiness, in addition to supporting with prayer religious, priests, and educators engaged in the journeys of spiritual discernment.
